Using Social Media by Students - Assignment Example

How use social media There has occurred a revolutionary change in the way education is imparted and received since the advent of computers in general and the Internet in particular. These days, a vast majority of students make use of social media to receive education, do assignments, projects, and research work because of the ease of portability of the devices of social media and the consistence of social media with the contemporary lifestyle of the young generation. This paper discusses the use of social media by the student population. A lot of research about the current trends in social media amongst the student population has been carried out within the last decade. According to the research carried out by Lenhart et al. (2010), people between 18 and 29 years of age account for 57 per cent of the total population of users of the social networks and maintain personal profiles on a range of social media websites. Pempek, Yermolayeva, and Calvert (2009) noted that although the amount of time spent by the users on social networking websites varied considerably, yet a vast majority of the users spend up to half an hour a day socializing on the social networking sites mostly from 9 p.m. to 12 a.m whereas students spend 47 minutes a day on the Facebook on average. More than half of the total population of students in colleges visits social networking sites numerously in a day (Sheldon, 2008). Types of social media commonly used by the students include but are not limited to blogs, chats on Twitter and Facebook, social networks, wikis, podcasts, videos, photo sharing on sites like Flickr, and gamification. A blog is a webpage or website that can easily be updated. Authors of blogs write regular entries in the format of a diary. The most interesting and effective blogs provide the students with an opportunity to engage in conversations with the bloggers as well as other readers who have commented on the blogs. Microblogging, as the name implies, is the process of writing very brief blog posts, that are sort of text messages. Presently, the most popular service of microblogging is provided by Twitter that provides the students with the opportunity to post the entries as long as 140 characters. Using Twitter, students can not only read their messages online but also can send their posts as text messages to one another’s mobiles. Social networking websites like Facebook serve as platforms using which the students can connect with one another and engage in different kinds of activities both academic and otherwise. Facebook and MySpace happen to be the most popular social networking websites that contain listing features and groups that enable targeted dialogue organization. Students primarily use Facebook to maintain connection with the people that they are acquainted with whether they are near to them or distant (Quan-Haase and Young, 2010). Another networking site is LinkedIn that contains sections entirely dedicated to job opportunities that work best for students who want to take their academic career to the next level without having to leave their jobs. Social networking sites make it convenient for the students to stay connected with the people who have similar affiliations or interests as them. A wiki is a collaborative form of work space that contains web pages that can be modified or contributed to by the students. Wikis are commonly used by students when they have to work on some project as a group. Wikis help them develop their projects collaboratively without imparting the need for the students to get together at one place to conduct their work. Students use short videos to share information with one another through websites or popular online services of video-sharing. These days, there is also an increasing trend of virtual education among the educationalists as well as the students that is imparted fundamentally through videos. Videos remain a very cost effective and yet extremely effective form of social media for the students as they cost them nothing and can easily be made and uploaded on the Internet. Podcasting is a method in which MP3 audio files are published on the Web that can be downloaded by the students on their personal computers or such portable listening devices as MP3 players or iPods. Photo sharing on Flickr is another frequently used social media platform by the students. Photos allow the students to make the information very engaging and interesting. This kind of social media particularly facilitates the students for whom English is the second language as the photos help them understand the content instantly. Gamification is the kind of social media that uses design principles or game technology for things that are not intrinsically like games. They work best for the game-savvy students who want to identify unique and innovative ways of sharing information with one another and creating things. Social media has increased in popularity specifically among the student population in the last five years. Since the year, not only the number of social media types has increased, but the devices on which the social media is accessed have also diversified and advanced. Researchers have found a drastic increase in students’ dependence upon and use of social media for educational purposes; “Since our last focused report on mobile learning in 2009, the environment for mobile learning has matured with greater clarity around the key opportunities and challenges associated with student use of mobile devices within instruction” (blackboard.com, 2012). College students make a vast majority of the users of social media network among all categories of students. According to Sponcil and Gitimu (n.d., p. 2) noted that social media profiles are maintained by 72 per cent of all college students and 45 per cent of them use the social media sites once or more times in a day. The consumer research conducted by Mintel shows that social networks have been accessed by 76 per cent of the users of the Internet within a period of three months, and that a host of devices are being used to access the social networks that include but are not limited to desktops, tablets, laptops, and smartphones (Mintel, 2012). Use of mobiles to access the social networks has increased over the past few years. At least 16 per cent of the users of social network use mobiles more often for social networking as compared to the traditional computers. Social media has become increasingly accessible and universal with growth in the use of smartphones. There is a whole range of economic or technological factors which may influence a student’s decision to select a particular way of consuming media. These factors include both the personal choice and convenience of the students as well as the principles of the educational institutions. For instance, the ongoing fiscal challenges in the school districts have imparted the need for the school administration to introduce innovative ways to decrease the cost and enhance the profitability of the business using technology. According to the Speak Up 2011 national results, 25 per cent of the district administrators recognized granting students the permission to use mobile as a measure that would reduce the cost (blackboard.com. 2012, p. 3). There has been a slight decline in the trend of blogging among the younger users of the Internet which can primarily be attributed to changes in the use of social network by them. Almost 73 per cent of the online teens and approximately 72 per cent of the young adults are the users of social networking sites (Lenhart et al., 2010). One of the main reasons of the immense popularity of social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter among the student population is their ease of use while communicating with others. The features and functions of these social networking websites make them very convenient for use by the students. Most of the college students use social media networks to stay in touch with their families and friends as well as strangers (Sponcil and Gitimu, n.d., p. 2). Another factor that has contributed immensely to the popularity of social media among the student population is the advent of iPad and its advertisement on an extremely large scale. Most of the students buy iPads because they provide them with the opportunity to stay connected with their friends and family anytime and anywhere they go since iPads are even easier to carry as compared to personal computers. The popularity of social networking sites among all kinds of social media is both a cause and effect of its use by the student population since a considerable population of students use social networking sites because they are the only kind of social media used by most of the people that the students want to interact with. Many students use these sites to sustain their already existing social relations rather than for making new relations (Boyd and Ellison, 2007). Concluding, social media plays a very important role in education nowadays. The main factors that make it so popular with the students are the cost effectiveness of social media and the style and portability of the social media devices. There has occurred a drastic increase in the student users of social media. The different types of social media available to the students include social networking sites, podcasts, videos, wikis, and photo sharing. During the last five years, students have been increasingly depending upon social media because of the advent of iPads and such other devices whose prime function is the promotion of social networking. Although all kinds of social media are used by the students, yet most students use social networking sites because of their user friendliness, cost effectiveness, and the full time connection that they provide between the users and their families and friends. References: blackboard.com 2012, Learning in the 21st century: mobile devices + social media = personalized learning, [Online] Available at http://www.blackboard.com/resources/markets/k-12/collateral/project-tomorrow/K12_Prjct-Tmrw_Mbl-Rpt_2012.pdf, [accessed: 3 January 2013]. Boyd, DM, and Ellison, NB 2007, Social network sites: Definition, history, and scholarship, Journal of Computer Mediated Communication, Vol. 13, pp. 210-230. Lenhart, A, Purcell, L, Smith, A, and Zickuhr, K 2010, Social media and young adults, Pew Internet and American Life Project, [Online] Available at http://www.pewinternet.org/Reports/2010/Social-Media-and-Young-Adults.aspx [accessed: 3 January 2013]. Mintel 2012, Social Media and Networking - UK - May 2012, [Online] Available at http://academic.mintel.com/display/590164/, viewed 2 January 2012. Pempek, TA, Yermolayeva, YA, and Calvert, SL 2009, College students social networking experiences on facebook, Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, Vol. 30, No. 3, pp. 227-238. Quan-Haase, A, and Young, AL 2010, Uses and gratifications of social media: A comparison of facebook and instant messaging. Bulletin of Science, Technology & Society, Vol. 30, No. 5. Sheldon, P 2008, Student favorite: Facebook and motives for its use, Southwestern Mass Communication Journal, Vol. 23, No. 2, pp. 39-53. Sponcil, M, and Gitimu, P n.d., Use of social media by college students: Relationship to communication and self-concept, Journal of Technology Research, [Online] Available at http://www.aabri.com/manuscripts/121214.pdf [accessed: 3 January 2013]. Read More